Food for Thought: An Interview With Emelie Irving, Executive Director, Southeast Texas Food Bank

You've heard of development offices that are "one-man" shows. Perhaps you work for one of them and are that one man (or woman, of course).

But just as prevalent are small organizations that have no development team at all, and fundraising duties fall heavily onto the shoulders of someone whose job title doesn't include "chief development officer" or anything like it.

Very often, that person is the CEO or executive director. Such is the case with the Southeast Texas Food Bank, located in Beaumont, Texas. According to the organization's website at setxfoodbank.org, one in every four children and 15 percent of the elderly in Texas live in poverty. The Southeast Texas Food Bank serves the counties of Jefferson, Orange, Hardin, Jasper, Newton, Polk, Sabine and Tyler. It distributes to approximately 130 nonprofit agencies within those eight counties. More than 16,000 households receive food each month from the food bank's member agencies, and approximately 200,000 meals are prepared each month with food provided by the food bank.

When the food bank was incorporated in 1991, it did no fundraising whatsoever, according to Executive Director Emelie Irving. By 2004, its budget was hovering around $700,000 to $800,000.

"When we were incorporated in 1991, we were begging, borrowing ... anything but stealing," Irving says. "We had no donors. Well, we had two donor names. My husband and myself were one, and one of our board members and her husband were another. We were trying to survive on grants and little events.

"Before we began direct-mail fundraising, we did not fundraise. There were several attempts to have an event, but with minimal success," she adds. "We needed real money."

The food bank now has 25,000 donors in its database, and its annual operating budget has grown to $1.9 million. The growth in itself is extraordinary — but even more so when you realize the organization has no fundraising staff and only actively solicits donations through direct mail. A little bit of money comes in online — and there are plans to try to grow that amount — but the only active solicitation it does is through direct mail.

"We only do direct-mail fundraising," Irving says. "We do have an annual Food and Fund Drive that's sponsored by the local media outlet. We don't pay for that or organize that; we are just the recipients.

"We don't have a development staff, so direct mail is a very efficient way for us to fundraise and it's been very successful."

In 2004, when Irving realized the organization desperately needed to start active fundraising, it took a Herculean effort for her to convince board members that spending money to make money was the way to go. They just didn't get it, thinking mainly that asking for donations would offend people and reflect badly on the organization. Then, of course, there was the cost. Board members were terrified that not only would the organization lose money, but that the food bank wouldn't even recoup its losses.

"What really probably got people to agree was that I was so convinced and so sure that this would be successful," she says. "Was I really as sure as I presented it? Not really ... but I believed it would be successful. I really projected absolute confidence in [direct mail]. If I had wavered even a second, they wouldn't have gone for it.

"I went so far out on a limb with this," Irving adds, with a barely audible sigh of relief. "If this hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here right now. It is very expensive. Acquisition in particular is very expensive."

Irving says it took three months, three board meetings, many one-on-one conversations and a whole lot of hand holding for her to get the OK to make the investment. One she did, she felt there was only one way to go — hire an agency.

That might seem counterintuitive in a small organization with limited resources, but Irving wouldn't have it any other way. And the risk paid off — the food bank, which partnered with Russ Reid — sees a higher-than-average (10 percent to 12 percent) response rate on its acquisition and cultivation efforts.

"Board members thought, 'Well why doesn't she just learn to write [fundraising] letters herself,' but that would not have been successful," Irving says. "We needed expertise we didn't have. With [in-house fundraising letters] we might have gotten in a few thousand dollars, but we needed hundreds of thousands."

Buoyed by a guarantee of success by Russ Reid, Irving jumped into the relationship, and everyone was pleasantly surprised — and continues to be. The results of the first campaign out of the gate were better than even she expected.

Irving says that even if an organization does manage to produce fundraising materials in-house, the keys to success are choosing lists, testing and measuring results — very specific and scientific skill sets that not a lot of organizations can afford to staff internally.

Looking ahead, Irving says the food bank will concentrate on beefing up its online presence and also strengthening its brand in the community. But there are no plans to "fix what ain't broken" as far as direct mail. It'll remain the backbone of fundraising at the organization, and it won't be coming in-house any time soon.

Her advice for smaller nonprofits that need to spread their fundraising wings?

"Direct mail works. There's a reason why so many people do it," she says. "But don't try to do it in-house if you're a small nonprofit without the skill and expertise to be able to do the testing, the marketing, the creative work, to know where to purchase a list. There's a whole science that goes into direct marketing. Don't try to do it on the cheap."

Finally, even in light of all of the eye-opening lessons Irving and her board have learned in their journey to becoming a direct-mail fundraising powerhouse, the most important one echoes the most basic advice any nonprofit needs to know:

"If you don't ask people," she said, "they won't give. But if you ask them, they will. It's been very humbling for me to see all the people that want to help. We didn't even know they were out there."